Are you not beautiful enough?
\nDo you have scars?
\nIs your smile asymmetrical?
\nHas age fallen on your shoulders?
\nDid birth give you a countenance
\nno one wants?
\nWould you submit to a surgeon\u2019s knife
\nto change the portrait of your face?<\/p>\n
I have no quarrel with that.
\nI enjoy perfect smiles,
\nthe winking of eyes,
\nthe cleft of chins,
\nthe piquant novella
\nof a soul on the mouth.<\/p>\n
I change my garden
\nyear to year.
\nIt is my face,
\na lengthening of the hedge,
\nthe smile of a pool,
\nthe tucking in of a bed,
\nfreshening,
\nlike rearranging furniture.<\/p>\n
But a cautionary note:
\nusing a blade,
\nis losing the life
\nyou put on yourself.
\nThe curvature of joy
\nfrom raising a child.
\nSorrow softened by love,
\nthe resolve of enduring
\nand patience of your lips.
\nThe grin of your heart,
\nthat keeps laughing and playing.<\/p>\n
All swept away by a surgeon\u2019s skill,
\nreplaced with a mask,
\nso nothing worth having
\nis seen anymore.
\nThe little things we tell in our faces,
\nwrinkles around eyes,
\nthe patina of time
\nin our cheeks and noses.
\nHow well or ill we have come
\nto the place of altering ourselves.
\nTo hide or reveal our soul inside,
\nthat says,
\nmirror, mirror on the wall,
\ndo I own the face that looks at me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Are you not beautiful enough? Do you have scars? Is your smile asymmetrical? Has age fallen on your shoulders? Did birth give you a countenance…<\/p>\n